Melanoma is a malignant tumor of melanocytes. Primarily it is a skin tumor, but it is also seen, though less frequently, in the melanocytes of the eye (uveal melanoma). Even though it represents one of the rarer forms of skin cancer, melanoma underlies the majority of skin cancer-related deaths. Despite many years of intensive laboratory and clinical research, the sole current effective cure is surgical resection of the primary tumor before it achieves a thickness of greater than 1 mm. If the tumor is more invasive, surgery can be combined with radiation and/or chemotherapy. Since these conventional modalities cannot cure patients of lethal metastasized tumors, efficacy of alternative treatments such as immunotherapy are being investigated in clinical trials. However, currently there is essentially still no cure for advanced stage disease despite decades of research.